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Dick Evans captures the pulse of life in the Mission District, the San Francisco neighborhood known for its murals and Latin American culture—and more recently for its rapid gentrification. Intimate, colorful images depict a place filled with diverse residents, stately Victorian houses, hand-painted store signs, Carnaval dancers, Día de los Muertos celebrants, political activists, and its namesake, Mission Dolores (here juxtaposed against portraits of Native people and indigenous cultural objects).

Evans’s photos highlight the growing threat to the neighborhood’s character, but they also reveal the many changes that have shaped the neighborhood into its vivacious present-day identity.

Knott’s Preserved reveals exactly how the Knott family turned a berry business into one of the major theme parks in the world. The berries and fried chicken were a just a yummy lead-in to what would become a thrills capital of the world. J. Eric Lynxwiler will share the story of how a man and a woman remained true to their values, sharing profits and credit whenever they could while creating an icon California destination for thrill seekers and children alike.

Codex Polaris, established in 2013 – is an book artist group based in Bergen, Norway that creates opportunities and builds exhibiting platforms for artists who work with books in the Nordic region. Alongside the exhibition program, Codex Polaris invites guest co-organisers to work on various networking projects, and writers to contribute with textworks to raise the profile book arts spanning local and international perspectives. Founded by Sarah Jost, Rita Marhaug, Imi Maufe and Randi Annie Strand. We will be discussing past and current projects at the BCC. – www.codexpolaris.com

Michael Suarez, S.J,. is Director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. A renowned historian, author, and worldwide leader of rare book scholarship interests, he co-edited the The Oxford Companion to the Book. Suarez will provide us with a compelling, richly illustrated description about how a group of printers were instrumental in making the anti-slavery movement happen in England. Their broadside engraving with an image diagramming the human cargo on slave-ship Brookes became a force for political change in the worldwide abolitionist movement.

A talk with Michael F. Suarez, S.J., director of Rare Book School, professor of English, University Professor, and honorary curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia.

*At the Commonwealth Club of California
110 Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94105

A menu is many things: a list, a brochure, an art-form, and even a manifesto. But menus tells us more than what people ate—but who they aspired to be. This presentation will take us through a cultural history of American menu writing from its 19th-century origins to its current artistic aspirations. By comparing two menus from the early 20th century and two menus from the early 21st, the talk will trace the evolution of American culinary language—and explore how that evolution tells a larger story of class and culture in America. The presentation will be illustrated with notable examples of historical menus from gastronomic collections.

Described as street photography in the wilderness, Yosemite People is a photography project and book by Jonas Kulikauskas. Carol McCusker, curator of photography at the Harn Museum of Art, describes the project best: “For the first time, a photographer is entering Yosemite as the WPA documentary photographers of the 1930s might, with a shifted priority on people rather than on nature.” The evening will also feature a small pop-up exhibition of photographs.

An illustrated talk and pop-up exhibition by Jonas Kulikauskas, artist and photographer.

An illustrated talk by Jonas Kulikauskas, photographer.

At the Women’s City Club of Pasadena, 160 N. Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101

The program featuring the lively art and wit of the ever popular activist Gary Snyder and Goins, is a conversation, reading and slide show with book signing of Dooby Lane Also Known as Guru Road, A Testament inscribed in Stone Tablets by DeWayne Williams. This their latest collaboration.

Suzanne Muchnic draws on decades of experience as a Los Angeles Times arts writer to relate the complicated story of how the Los Angeles County Museum of Art emerged as the largest art museum in the western United States. Her in-depth reporting, fleshed out with private interviews and archival research, offers a lively tale about the convergence of art, money, people, and buildings that has produced a museum perpetually in the making.

An illustrated talk by Suzanne Muchnic, journalist and author.

At the Women’s City Club of Pasadena, 160 N. Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101

After writing 16 books of nonfiction, including 5 on San Francisco history, Charles Fracchia has written a novel: Palimpsest: A Man’s Life in San Francisco.

The novel is a “going to age” (as opposed to a “coming of age”) work of fiction. It deals with the life of a man in late middle age who seeks to re-establish the vibrancy of his youthful years, dealing with issues of sexual potency, work, relationships, and other concerns that mark advancing age.

Fracchia spent the first 25 years of his career in investment banking (he was one of the founders of Rolling Stone Magazine) and then more than 30 years as an academic, teaching at San Francisco State, USF, and City College of San Francisco.

Join us for a ceremony celebrating the recipients of the 2018 Oscar Lewis Awards in Western History and the Book Arts. The Oscar Lewis Awards were established by the Book Club of California in 1994 in honor of Oscar Lewis (1893-1992), San Francisco author, historian, and Book Club secretary from 1921-1946.

Please click here for more information about the awards and a list of past recipients.

English artist R. Dighton, a contemporary of James Gilray and George Cruikshank, was well known for his satirical caricatures of lawyers, noblemen, actors and military officers. His talent made him successful; his cunning kept him consistently employed. How he kept out of prison despite a second career stealing prints is a tale worth telling.

Discover a short history of Tassajara, from Native American Sweat Lodges to Pioneering Zen Monastery. In Marilyn McDonald’s book (forward by David Chadwick), you’ll meet the people who have loved Tassajara. Its healing waters, rugged remoteness, memorable characters, perilous road, fires, restorations, conversations under the Gossip Oak, peace and quiet are beautifully documented in this book by the late author Marilyn McDonald. Join her daughter, Lee Doyle, for a talk about Tassajara and the book.

“Everywhere I looked were wonderful old stone buildings. Being inquisitive, I wanted to know who had built them and why. None of the Zen students I asked had answers that were complete enough for me.” — Marilyn McDonald, author of A Brief History of Tassajara

A talk by Lee Doyle, daughter of author Marilyn McDonald, and David Rogers, Tassajara historian.